Boehmite (AlOOH) can be used as a dental abrasive to make dentifrice with low abrasivity and moderate cleaning ability, and is particularly well adapted for use with CPC, an antimicrobial agent frequently used in toothpaste formulations, because it has good CPC compatibility. However, boehmite also has the disadvantages of poor sodium fluoride compatibility and boehmite has also been known to negatively affect flavor ingredients. Additionally, boehmite provides relatively low abrasion levels thereby limiting its cleaning effectiveness.
Precipitated silica and silica gel are currently the preferred dental abrasives in dentifrices, since they have excellent sodium fluoride compatibility and can provide many levels of abrasiveness and cleaning ability depending on the silica structure chosen and the dentifrice loading level. However, these silicas have the disadvantages of poor compatibility with cationic antimicrobial ingredients such as CPC and are known to interact with dentifrice flavor components.
Thus, a dentifrice formulator striving to produce a dentifrice with high cleaning and low abrasivity, high CPC and sodium fluoride compatibility and reduced flavor interaction using a boehmite dental abrasive must balance several factors. While boehmite can be used at high loading levels to produce toothpaste that is effective at cleaning teeth with low abrasivity, the boehmite also negatively affects the compatibility with fluoride and interacts with flavorants to create off-flavors. So while adding boehmite provides cleaning benefits, its compatibility issues must be addressed before it can be effectively used in a dentifrice formulation.
Given the foregoing, there is a need for a boehmite composition that not only provides excellent abrasive and cleaning performance but also has compatibility with other ingredients used in dentifrice formulations, such as fluoride, flavors and cationic species.